The present disclosure relates generally to social networking and in particular to integrating smart social questions and answers enabled for use with social networking tools.
Social Networking is a recent phenomenon that has been helped tremendously with the advent of wireless technology and on-line services such as mobile devices and the Internet. A social networking group is similar to an online community with a group of individuals as its members, that often have a particular need or specific interest. Social networking is often made possible by a social networking service. A social networking service is an online service, platform, or site that focuses on facilitating the building of relationships among people who share common interests, activities, backgrounds, or real-life connections. Most social networking services build a user profile or other representation that identifies a particular user with some specificity. These profiles can vary but often provide additional information about the user such as gender, age, and social links. Most social network services are web-based and provide means for users to interact over the Internet such as through electronic mail (e-mail) and instant messaging. However, the popularity of mobile devices has not only enabled web-based connectivity but also has helped with the development of applications that may provide mobile connectivity through other subscription means.
Social networking websites are known as social sites and often function like an online community. Once access is provided to a social networking website, the members begin socializing and exchanging ideas and pose questions and answers. Social networking sites allow users to share ideas, activities, events, interests and at times provide a neutral forum to ask questions and receive answers from a large cross section of the population anonymously, if desired.
In recent years, social networking websites have also been used to interconnect employees of a particular company so that they can share ideas and solve problems. In addition, open communities have taken advantage of such websites to identify potential problems and help resolve them. Examples can include user groups, open source software developer communities or other relationships that are established around connecting customers and merchants/service providers.